Family - - Page 3

Teaching children to embrace the difficult delights of life

Published on June 26, 2025June 27, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

Reading for pleasure has lost popularity with the rise of a digital culture: it can be restored if communities promote more traditional ‘difficult delights’.

I browsed the shelves for as long as my mother would allow when I visited the library as a child. When her patience – or our available time – finally petered out, I brought seven or eight books up to the library counter to check out – a healthy mix of historical fiction, fantasy, mystery, and classics. The librarian often raised an eyebrow or chuckled at my stack of books, but my mother knew I would usually read them all.

I tore through books in my childhood and teenage years. But I wasn’t alone. My siblings read a similar amount, as did some in my friend group, especially those with little to no access to video games and social media.

Such habits are increasingly rare among children. A 2024 study conducted by the National Literacy Trust (NLT) in the U.K. found that only 35% of children ages 8-18 read for pleasure – a number 8.8 percentage points lower than in 2023. Since 2016, the NLT has seen a downward trend in children reading for pleasure.

A 2020 study conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress on 9- and 13-year-olds found that those who regularly read for fun in the U.S. has also dropped substantially over the past decade. Data from 2022 and 2023 show the continuation of this declining trend.

Meanwhile, screen time for children in our country continues mounting since the pandemic.

This isn’t news to most of us; we witness such decline every day in anecdotal forms. I used to see children (and adults) reading on trains and planes; now I primarily see screens. I’ve also seen the decline in the emptiness of my neighborhood library and in the complaints of schoolchildren when they encounter books I once enjoyed.

Efforts are underway to counteract this decline, however. Second Lady Usha Vance recently announced a “Summer Reading Challenge” for children in grades K-8, inviting children to read 12 books between June 1 and Sept. 5, completing a log of what they read. Each child who completes the challenge will receive a certificate, a small prize, and an entry into a raffle to visit Washington, D.C.

Schools often institute similar summer reading challenges or requirements. A classical Christian school in my area created a “Screen Free Summer Challenge,” encouraging children to spend as many days as possible without screen-based entertainment.

Such challenges can help direct children to spend their time taking in the written word rather than delighting in the easy pleasures of the online world. But reversing our culture’s trend toward practical illiteracy will require more than the enticement of a prize or grade.

In my years as a student, tutor and teacher, I have found that those who read much do so not primarily because they are required or enticed, but because of a deep love for reading, a love inculcated and emboldened by their peers and family.

In order to achieve a culture that encourages reading, we need to build sub-cultures that do not normalize ease – the ease of flipping through TV channels or scrolling through social media – but instead recognize the value of difficult delights. Such work begins in the home, with the culture of the immediate family, and moves outward to the neighborhood and then to the church or school community.

By difficult delights I do not mean only those found within the pages of a book, but also the delights of work in the garden or garage, or the delights of time spent at the piano bench in front of sheet music or on a ladder with a paintbrush in hand.

For the enchantment of literature to become once again a force in our culture, we must become disenchanted with the latest offers of a passive and difficulty-free life mediated by screens and feeds. We must become disconnected from the consumerist mindset that dominates our society. When a sub-culture, however small, connects instead with gladhearted gratitude around pursuit of the good, true and beautiful – not the easy, crass and self-gratifying – children will be blessed in all variety of ways, including a fondness for good stories.

In other words, for children to love reading again, they must be shown and learn how to love life – real, embodied life, as God has given it, with all its difficult delights.

By Sarah Reardon.

The above article first appeared in Intellectual Takeout (Bloomington, Minnesota), and is reproduced by permission.

The arrogance of transhumanism

Published on June 6, 2025June 7, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

Technology has many benefits, but some high-tech fads like transhumanism, seem to treat human life as just another physical process to be manipulated.

Christian faith teaches us humility in light of the mystery of God’s creation of life. Today, as we enter a brave new world of elite technocrats calling for “transhumanism,” this faith is being tested.

We have been warned about the fate of those who seek to become gods on earth. Warnings found in Greek mythology (Prometheus and Icarus), Jewish tales (golems) and Western literature (Frankenstein) are being ignored in today’s secular world of rapid technological advancement. This advancement is evident in artificial intelligence (AI), which places “knowledge” at the fingertips of every person with a phone or a computer; experimentation on human embryos; and technological tools such as CRISPR that can select for human genetic traits. Hubris is a natural consequence. For many, we have become gods.

Technology can be a great boon for human progress, but caution is warranted for some of the latest high-tech fads, which seem to treat human life as just another physical process to be manipulated.

What is Transhumanism?

Transhumanism is the call for three supers—super intelligence, super longevity and super happiness—all gained through technology. Tech billionaires such as Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are the biggest promoters of transhumanist thinking. While they debate whether transhuman beings will be organic beings with increased lifespans and mental capabilities enhanced through drugs, or inorganic machines uploaded with individual personalities and enhanced thinking ability, they hope that technology will enable humans to design our evolutionary futures.¹ Some transhumanists predict that the human mind will be uploaded into digital form; others believe that the future rests in designer babies, artificial wombs and anti-aging therapies.

Transhumanists could be dismissed as computer geeks who have read too much science fiction. But designing babies has become a reality and will become more refined with technological advances. American companies already screen the genetic traits of embryos, discarding the ones with high risk of disease or unwanted traits (such as being male or female), then implant the chosen embryo into a womb. Other researchers are pursuing the development of artificial wombs.²

Technocratic transhumanists believe in using drugs to enhance human cognition. This includes the use of psychedelics, long promoted in Silicon Valley. In the 1980s, the psychedelic drug MDMA, known popularly as Ecstasy, was touted as enhancing feelings of love and social connection that would heal “global trauma” and usher in world peace. This faith in MDMA as a wonder therapeutic drug has continued into the 21st century. In 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration turned down an application by Lykos Therapeutics for MDMA therapy, arguing that more data was needed. Lykos remains, however, a favorite of Big Tech investors who see psychedelics as the future.

The tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel is a major investor in Atai Life Sciences, which is testing ketamine-related drugs. Elon Musk has publicly mentioned his use of small amounts of prescription ketamine, an anesthetic. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has talked about how his son overcame grief following the death of his mother by using ayahuasca, an Amazonian plant psychedelic.³ In a Cabinet meeting on April 30, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins told President Trump that his team was looking at psychedelics as an option to combat veteran suicide.⁴

Big Tech gurus such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, however, understand some of the dangers of the new age of transhumanism. For example, Musk has warned that AI poses the greatest threat to humanity. It does not take a tech billionaire to see that the promise of bringing people closer together through social media technology has failed. People seem more divided and lonely than ever even though they regularly use TikTok, Instagram, SnapChat or Facebook. And who is not worried about government control of information and enhanced surveillance through technology? Many of our youth are living in an augmented reality through phones, screens and earbuds. We live in an age of in vitro fertilization, genetic manipulation and transgender surgeries.

The pernicious fad of transgender treatment through hormones and mutilating surgery, even on children, could be seen as an offshoot of transhumanist ideology. Probably no worse example of playing God with the natural order may be imagined. However, we should not blame it on Silicon Valley tech titans. Musk is vehemently opposed to transgender treatments of children, having seen one of his own sons “transition” by means of this Frankensteinian perversion of modern medical practice.

Equally Frankensteinian is gain-of-function manipulation of dangerous pathogens, which likely caused the catastrophic Covid-19 pandemic with the involvement of U.S. tax dollars in a Chinese lab. President Trump acted to restrict such research in May. He previously signed several orders to counteract transgender ideology.

Longevity and Immortality

Medical clinics are popping up promising to help clients live longer and better—for a hefty price.⁵ The goal of these longevity clinics is to extend and optimize a patient’s health for years through early cancer screenings, stem-cell therapies and socalled biological-age testing. Their efficacy is unclear. Venture capital is investing in longevity research, more than doubling the investment between 2021 and 2022 from $27 million to $57 million globally.

While aiming for longevity, scientists have explored the physiological dimensions of death itself. For transhumanists following this work on death, hopes of human immortality have arisen from attempts to keep the brain alive after the human body has failed.⁶ In 2018 the Silicon Valley AI billionaire entrepreneur Sam Altman reportedly paid $10,000 to join a waiting list to upload the contents of his brain to a cloud computer, on the chance that his consciousness could live on after he dies.

Transhumanists believe that true human immortality is only a speck on the horizon, but some are convinced that the future lies in detaching oneself from one’s physical body. The Alcor Life Extension Foundation, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, seeks to capitalize on this vision of brain life after death through cryonics, the freezing of human bodies and brains in liquid nitrogen after legal death, to be revived (resurrected) once new technology becomes available.

Within the scientific community, cryonics is regarded as quackery and a pseudo-science, but this has not prevented the nonprofit from enlisting close to 2,000 members. More than 200 have already died and had their bodies frozen. Another 116 members have had only their heads preserved. Pet bodies have also been preserved. Immortality does not come cheap, though. Alcor charges $200,000 for freezing a human body or $80,000 for just the head.⁷

Stéphane Charpier, a professor of neuroscience at Sorbonne University who is a leading scientist in studying brain death, dismisses cryogenics as a “pipe dream.” He acknowledges that humans are capable of “tinkering with brains,” but considers it unimaginable that a machine could replicate complex neural processes.⁸

New Frontiers in IVF

In vitro fertilization (IVF) offers a devil’s bargain to humanity. It is popular for helping infertile couples to have children, but is also used in ways that lack an appealing justification, including reproduction without both a legal father and mother, eugenic selection of embryos, or careerist postponement of childbearing.

IVF works by extracting eggs from a woman who has been primed with injections of powerful drugs, then fertilizing the eggs with a man’s sperm in a laboratory. After a fertilized egg (zygote) undergoes embryo culture over two to six days, the embryo can be implanted in the would-be mother. Women can freeze dozens of their eggs—a practice sometimes encouraged and paid for by large corporate employers in the U.S.—while they wait to make the decision to get pregnant. After eggs are combined with sperm to form embryos, surplus embryos may be frozen or discarded. How many frozen embryos exist in America is not known.

Embryos may be subjected to experimentation. Research on fetal tissue is permitted on a state-by-state basis. New York state has no limit on how long embryos may be grown for experimentation, while California has a guideline of 12 days.

Embryology has made huge advances in the last three decades, but we are still at the beginning of a wave of unforeseen consequences.⁹ In the 1990s researchers pioneered preimplantation genetic testing (PGT). An embryologist took single cells biopsied from embryos and identified their sex, as well as certain chromosomal abnormalities. PGT subsequently became increasingly refined, and today nearly half of IVF cycles are tested, at a cost of $3,000-$5,000 per batch.

Eugenics Based on ‘Risk Scores’

There are questions about PGT’s accuracy, but in any case this testing goes beyond the promise of improved health. Newer polygenic embryo studies have identified genes linked to traits ranging from height to likely educational attainment to propensity for mental health disabilities such as depression and schizophrenia. Unlike earlier PGT, which focused on single-gene disorders, polygenic embryo screening (PES) examines the likelihood of developing more complex traits that depend on many genes.

PES provides “risk scores” that rely on identification of hundreds or thousands of genetic variants that can be linked with certain human attributes. PES lends itself to eugenics, the selective breeding of children. Companies have been created to screen embryos for hundreds of conditions. One such company is Orchid, headed by Noor Siddiqui, in Silicon Valley. Orchid provides polygenic screening that produces a risk profile of each embryo’s propensity for certain health conditions. This risk profile aids the selection of which embryo(s) to implant.¹⁰

PES has not yet gained wide acceptance, but some surveys show that nearly 4 in 10 people said they were “more likely than not” to use it if it could increase their child’s chance of getting into a top college.¹¹ Several European countries have banned this procedure or limited its use. Britain, for example, does not permit PES, but does allow screening for an approved list of roughly 17,000 single-gene disorders. In the U.S., such screening is not subject to any regulatory oversight. Genomic Prediction, based in New Jersey, has provided risk scores for at least 420 clients involving more than 1,600 embryos.

Legal and Ethical Conundrums

The advances in embryo research have given rise to ethical and legal problems. In one among many similar disputes, a Tennessee divorce court in 1992 concluded that embryos “are not, strictly speaking, either ‘persons’ or ‘property,’ but occupy an interim category that entitles them to special respect because of their potential for human life.” Nonetheless, the court ruled in favor of the father who wanted to destroy seven frozen embryos, while his wife wanted to donate them to others. The court upheld the father’s claim, based on a contractual provision, that he should not have to father children against his will.¹²

State legislatures have only begun to address the status of embryos. In 2018, the Arizona legislature passed a law requiring judges to award disputed embryos to bring in vitro human embryos to birth and not keep them frozen in storage, regardless of preexisting legal contracts.¹³

Spurred on by a controversy that arose from an Alabama court decision during his 2024 presidential campaign, President Trump signed an executive order this year that calls for policy recommendations to protect IVF and lower its costs. Many around his administration support his pro-natal perspective and are strong supporters of IVF. Despite having experienced no known infertility issues, Elon Musk has used IVF to produce most of his many known children (some with the assistance of paid surrogate mothers). Peter Thiel has invested in multiple fertility-related companies.¹⁴

There is widespread concern in the developed world about declining birth rates, as described in the May 2025 Mindszenty Report. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to see IVF as a policy solution to this problem or to push governmental support of the $25 billion global IVF industry. IVF is very expensive and unpleasant, has a low success rate, and poses significant health risks for both the mother and the offspring.¹⁵ There are obvious ethical problems with destroying embryos, practicing eugenic selection of embryos, experimenting on embryos, and engineering children who may never know both of their biological parents. IVF is contrary to Catholic teaching.

Enter the Brave New World

Couples can be infertile for various reasons, but both eggs and sperm decline in quality with age. Therefore, IVF is less effective for older would-be parents. Changing the culture to encourage more marriage and childbearing for women in their 20s would be a preferable way to boost birth rates. And we certainly do not want the government to promote IVF, or related assisted reproductive technologies such as purchased eggs and surrogate motherhood, for gay couples or single parents.¹⁶

We are at a point in embryo science that allows for the culling of the population. Whether it is called positive or negative eugenics, it is all eugenics in the end. Although it is possible to do IVF without destroying embryos, IVF in the U.S. commonly entails the rejection and elimination of at least several embryonic human beings.¹⁷ Designer babies culled from a herd of subsequently discarded sibling embryos may not appreciate their commoditized origins.

Essential to any discussion of transhumanism or IVF is the importance of understanding God and the mystery of our creation and His design for the world. Removal of God from the human equation tends to breed nihilism and hopelessness.¹⁸ Transhumanism and Christianity present divergent value systems. For the transhumanist, the highest virtue is intelligence and the highest goal is to defeat death. Christians believe that the greatest ideal is love—love of others, including one’s own children, in their flawed humanity, and love of God. Transhumanism is a new religion, which should not replace God.

This article is published by the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation in St Louis, Missouri, USA. The original article is available from the foundation’s website: www.mindszenty.org. The Mindszenty Report is not copyrighted, and readers are invited to forward copies to their local bishops, priests and pastors.

Alexander Thomas, “Transhumanism: Billionaires Want to Use Tech to Tech to
Enhance Our Abilities,” The Conversation, January 16, 2024. ↩︎
Mark Legg, “What Does the Bible Say About Transhumanism?” Denison Forum, June
20, 2023. ↩︎
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/opinion/tech-billionaires-psychedelics.html. ↩︎
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/va-secretary-tells-trump-about-psychedelicspotential-to-combat-military-veteran-suicide-crisis-at-cabinet-meeting/;
https://www.11alive.com/article/news/politics/va-sec-doug-collins-says-agency-willlook-at-psychedelic-other-alternative-treatments/85-d90e6b9d-a705-4f09-aeda5b839879bd03 ↩︎
Alex Janin, “The Longevity Clinic Will See You Now—for $100,000,” Wall Street
Journal, July 10, 2023; Alex Janin, “Want Better Health and Status? For
$250,000, Longevity Clinics Promise Both,” Wall Street Journal, April 6, 2025. ↩︎
https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/health-andbiotech/immortality-an-ancient-fantasy-revived-by-transhumanism/. ↩︎
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-12-19/see-inside-alcor-lifeextension-s-cryogenics-facility-in-arizona. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
This discussion of IVF and the current state of embryo research draws heavily from
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/25/opinion/human-embryoexperiments-timeline.html; and https://answersingenesis.org/sanctity-oflife/2025/04/24/new-york-times-we-owe-clustercells/?srsltid=AfmBOoqAkPMgoM175_FK6K6D6kVjrK7t7T9ulxqgShugqUGsZsPK07gt. ↩︎
Anna Louie Sussman, “Should Human Life be Optimized?”
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/04/01/opinion/ivf-gene-selectionfertility.html. ↩︎
https://answersingenesis.org/sanctity-of-life/2025/04/24/new-york-times-we-oweclustercells/?srsltid=AfmBOoqAkPMgoM175_FK6K6D6kVjrK7t7T9ulxqgShugqUGsZsPK07gtd. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
Ibid. ↩︎
https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2024-03/FS268.pdf. See also n. 17. ↩︎
See “A Comprehensive Report on the Risks of Assisted Reproductive Technology” by
Katie Fell for the Center of Bioethics and Culture Network, https://cbcnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Comprehensive-Paper-on-ART-Final.pdf. ↩︎
For an in-depth discussion of surrogate motherhood and purchased eggs, see
Mindszenty Report, December 2019. ↩︎
Kayla Bartsch, “Eugenics Gets a Modern Facelift, with Investment from Peter Thiel,”
National Review, April 4, 2025. See also
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2024/12/96647/. ↩︎
https://firstthings.com/the-impossibility-of-christian-transhumanism/. ↩︎

Medical sterilisation of children ‘paused’ by Qld govt

Published on May 15, 2025May 15, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

by John Morrissey

The Queensland Government has restricted medical sterilisation and mutilation of children despite pressure from gender therapy lobbyists.

The questionable practice of subjecting minors to puberty-blocking drugs is usually met with government indifference and little attention in the local media.

However, Queensland Health’s recently-announced restriction on this treatment for all new child and adolescent patients has clearly provoked the Albanese Labor government’s health minister Mark Butler into action.

On January 31 he announced a review into gender therapies, to be conducted by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), with an interim report to be delivered in mid-2026.

This is seen by many to be a stalling tactic to avert the action initiated by Queensland’s recently-elected Liberal National Party government.

Predictably, the Australian Human Rights Commission and media outlets such as Crikey.com have protested about so-called right-wing “ideology” preventing “trans and gender-diverse” children from accessing this controversial form of medical treatment; but Queensland Premier David Crisafulli and his government must stand firm for the sake of thousands of innocent children.

Note that in Queensland 600 current “gender” patients will nonetheless continue to receive treatment with puberty-blockers or hormonal drugs.

Up-to-date statistics are uncertain, but the numbers undergoing gender treatment each year have bee increasing in all states. In Queensland, the number of patients soared from 190 in 2017 to 922 in 2022. In Victoria, it increased from 472 in 2019 to 1,290 in 2023, with a lengthy waiting list.

It is believed that social media, classroom indoctrination and the entertainment industry — not to mention the ill-considered “advice” of sections of the healthcare industry — are responsible for this surge. In Victoria, health professionals and others are threatened by legal penalties from seeking to dissuade children and others from this irreversible course (see below).

The only recognised guidelines for gender-reassignment practices in Australia are the model developed by Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) and a similar framework promoted by NSW Health. Both were recently described by Sydney journalist Bernard Lane, as “nothing less than the blueprint for gender- affirming medicine in Australia”, created by its very practitioners. Paradoxically, Mr Butler’s intervention, belated as it is, confirms the inadequacy of the RCH and similar guidelines.

Children and adolescents presenting with gender dysphoria are often also suffering from other psychological
problems. These include depression (74.6%) and other conditions such as suicidal thoughts and autism (Australian Trans Pathways Studies in Youth, 2020).

Why normal standards of care, relying on evidence-based research, have been ignored in these cases is explained by Australian psychiatrist Dr Andrew Amos in a revealing study published last year in Australasian Psychiatry. He explains that the principle of the gender-affirming model of care is that “all health clinicians have an ethical responsibility not to question or evaluate patient reported gender identity, even when that identity is unstable, changes rapidly, and is co-morbid with severe mental illness”.

Dr Amos points out that these practitioners “assume access to gender-affirming interventions is a human right that should be available to anyone competent to request them”. That is, they reject the need for any
systematic evaluation of whether these treatments have benefited patients.

Despite a torrent of information from overseas warning of the dangers of this treatment, and the new restrictions on its use for minors in Finland, Sweden, the UK and some U.S. states such as Florida, Australian governments have persisted with transgender “treatments” of children. At no point have they ever felt obliged to produce evidence to justify their practices which lead to the irreversible sterilisation of children too young to make a mature decision about many other facets of their lives.

So-called healthcare professionals have driven a wedge between family members, and bullied parents into withdrawing their objections to their children being subjected to transgender treatment. In Victoria, parents, doctors, teachers and counsellors face heavy penalties if they offer advice, or even prayer, contrary to transgender ideology, as stipulated by the counselling censorship provisions of the state’s draconian Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021.

We have seen in the UK the 2019 scandal surrounding the Tavistock Clinic’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS). In April 2024 came the bombshell report by Dr Hilary Cass, OBE, commissioned by NHS England, on gender identity services for children and young people. In addition, Scandinavian and U.S. reviews have found the evidence favouring hormonal treatment of gender-distressed minors to be very weak and uncertain. In reality, gender-affirmation or sex-reassignment is impossible, owing to unalterable chromosomes. Moreover, surgical reconstructions are only cosmetic.

Long-term studies overseas do not record positive outcomes, especially for those who later regret an
irreversible choice made when they were children.

Australian governments and even courts have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the weight of evidence from overseas pleading caution. This is how an Australian Family Court judge resolved the case of parents disputing the administering of testosterone to their 16-years-old trans-identifying daughter. He ruled last November that, in the absence of evidence-based guidance, it is “common sense” to accept the “best available guidance” and a “consensus favouring gender medicine”. This judge used masculine pronouns throughout when referring to the daughter and rejected the relevance of “potential later interventions” when endorsing testosterone treatment.

Nowhere in the gender-affirming literature published in Australia does the word “de-transition” appear. There
is no acknowledgement of the many youngsters who subsequently regret what has been done to their bodies.

I once wrote a review of American author Walt Heyer’s book, Gender, Lies and Suicide: A Whistleblower
Speaks Out (2013), in which he describes how, in a bid to overcome a major depressive illness, he underwent so-called gender reassignment after which he tried to live as a woman named Laura Jensen. He explains how he was seduced into this treatment and how his mental health problems returned with a vengeance once the initial euphoria had worn off. After eight years of suffering increasing regret about his decision, he “de-transitioned” and now lives as a man.

More heart-rending are the cases investigated by Channel Seven’s Spotlight program, “Breaking the silence: The reality of de-transitioning” (August, 2023), in which teenagers tell of their disillusionment with transgender treatment and the knowledge that there is no way back from the medical sterilisation and surgical mutilation that they have undergone. Chloe is an American girl, who after being diagnosed with gender dysphoria began medical treatment at 12 and underwent a double-mastectomy at 16. She declares, “I asked for help and they gave me mutilation.”

The Australian Christian Lobby has been particularly active in warning parents, children and teenagers against the transgender cult’s deceptive promise that it has a simple silver-bullet remedy for their mental health issues. The ACL has produced a two-part documentary, “The gender experiment: The truth revealed”, which is available online. It exposes the fraudulent promise of the transgender lobby and features accounts from Chloe Cole and her Australians counterparts on how they were seduced into transitioning and how disillusioned they became with the result.

In the course of the documentary, Queensland child psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer explains that adolescents prioritise short-term gains and that brain development and deferred gratification come only with maturity. She describes the tragedy of parents losing custody of their children when they object to their children undergoing gender reassignment, and the unrelenting pressure she has experienced from her professional colleagues to defer to transgender ideology. The ACL documentary is highly recommended.All this shows how important it is for the Queensland Crisafulli government to stand firm on its moratorium on transgender treatments of children. The public has every right to be sceptical about the “independence” of the process being undertaken by the NHMRC.

The transgender medical lobby has already established a bridgehead into the heart of federal government decision-making through an LGBTIQA+ health advisory group chaired by assistant health minister Gerardine “Ged” Kearney.

Furthermore, it is unlikely that the states’ chief health officers will break rank and examine sceptically treatments which have divorced themselves from evidence-based medicine. Notwithstanding being unable to produce “gold standard evidence” to support its recommendations, a particularly accommodating review for the NSW government in 2024 by the Sax Institute alleges that puberty suppression and gender-affirming hormones could be beneficial.

The Australian public should demand much better standards from healthcare professionals, especially for youngsters believed to be suffering from gender dysphoria, which, if left untreated, usually dissipates by adulthood — without harmful interventions …

About the author
John Morrissey is a retired secondary school teacher who has taught in government, independent and
Catholic schools. He lives in the Melbourne suburb of Hawthorn with his blue heeler, Tammy, and writes
regularly for the Endeavour Forum Newsletter.

Sacrifice, a mother stays home with her child

Sacrifice: a viable alternative to institutional childcare?

Published on March 15, 2025May 24, 2025 by EF TeamLeave a comment

By Kathy Clubb

Even secular commentators are noticing that children are better off having their mothers at home and are promoting the value of self-sacrifice.

The decision to place a child into institutional childcare is usually motivated by one of three things: financial gain – a mother needs to work to increase her family’s income; intellectual gain – the mother wants to have her talents or intellect recognised outside the home; or personal gain – a mother wants the freedom to pursue her own desires and from the burden of child-rearing. In some cases, the decision is a combination of all three. Yet given the indisputable evidence of harm suffered by children who undergo extended, outsourced childcare, perhaps it is time parents considered a challenging alternative: poverty in both the material and spiritual aspects.

Poverty, as experienced by most people in developed Western nations, is a far cry from the dirt-poor experience of our forebears. ‘Poverty’ by today’s standards, is more likely to involve forgoing expensive holidays and large modern homes, rather than forgoing food, clothing or a weatherproof house. The modern form of poverty is aligned with the notions of frugality and modest living, and often necessitates a degree of self-sufficiency: sewing clothes, growing food, or learning home maintenance skills.

However, even this relatively affluent type of poverty can inspire terror into a culture used to an excessively-high living standard, and so inflation, rising interest rates and financial uncertainty lure mothers into the workforce, oblivious to the economic impact of government-subsidised childcare.

We can all sympathise with families who are close to financial breaking point and facing the prospect of losing their home due to an inability to make the mortgage repayments. Yet, at what point does saving the family home (or purchasing one) become a matter of placing material possessions above the needs of children? Surely it is preferable to accept a life of renting, or living in a shabby or small home over outsourcing childcare, and giving children the subtle message that they are less important to their parents than money?

Other mothers may be in a better financial position but want their skills and gifts recognised in the workplace or by their academic peers. This is one trap mentioned by clinical social worker, Erica Komisar, who spoke at a recent meeting of ARC – the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. Addressing the harms of institutionalised child care, she gives a wholistic appraisal of the value of parents, concluding that motherhood, more than simply being a role, is a vocation – a surprising conclusion for a secular psychoanalyst. Komisar states that she has met many women who want to stay home with their children but are pressured to return to the workforce because they are ‘too intelligent’ to be stay-at-home mothers.

Komisar also addresses the economic aspect, suggesting that couples should be realistic about the financial impact of children prior to marriage, and not expect a new mother to return to work, as a matter of course. She points out the need for sacrifice, noting that this is an antidote to the prevailing selfishness which makes parenthood so difficult for many of today’s young couples. Refreshingly, Komisar acknowledges the beneficial effects of the extended family, and encourages people to see the essential goodness of family life and to accept its responsibilities in order to enjoy its rewards.

The idea of self-sacrifice is echoed by Emily Finley, in her thoughtful article, ‘Mother Culture’ and Mothers as Transmitters of Culture. Finley addresses our culture’s obsession with ‘self-care’, highlighting that a mother’s experience of caring for her family is actually the means for her to experience fulfilment, rather than being an obstacle to it.

Finley also argues that stay-at-home mothers who make an effort to educate themselves are a powerful weapon in the fight to regain Christian culture. She explains how the modus operandi of revolutionary forces all the way from the Jacobins to contemporary woke neo-conservatives always includes the ‘liberation’ of women from the obligation to raise their own children. She writes, “Women who remained at home to raise their children were passing on the old ways and traditions and were, moreover, not economic contributors to the collective.”

It is good to consider that not all the harms of institutional childcare manifest in the form of poor academic outcomes or a propensity to break the law as adults. Another potential negative is the perpetuating of a cycle of over-achievement: the emptiness of this lifestyle is often hidden beneath the trappings of external success. Similarly, the contribution made by a well-educated, stay-at-home mother to her family is often overlooked. The social scientist measures only tangible markers such as qualifications, employment achievements, financial assets and other material values. Forming children’s souls and thereby improving the culture is simply too subtle a criterion. Not all of our human actions can be evaluated, tabled and then summarised in a neat abstract, and in any case, it is that kind of utilitarian thinking which is behind the philosophy that introduced out-of-home childcare in the first place.

Catholic writer Noelle Mering believes that rather than relying on studies to prove the harms or otherwise of institutional childcare and early education, we should be asking if childcare can replace a mother. She makes a good point. Whether or not a study shows that prolonged daycare is harmful, it can never place a value on motherhood itself. The idea that studies should be our source of guidance is itself a dehumanising conclusion. Mering continues, referring to mothers: “Indeed, her time, investment, and consistency are invaluable, beyond what any pile of statistics can demonstrate—and these can be discounted, and too often are, if we have succumbed to a reductive technocratic vision of the person.”

For parents to rely on traditions and on an intuition about what is good for their children is yet another exercise in poverty. To decide that, in the face of pressure from family members, co-workers, economic forces and cultural norms, they will personally raise their children, is not likely to win them any awards or accolades. However, parents who choose this kind of poverty for the sake of their children will not go unrewarded: their legacy will be a cultural contribution with an eternal value.

SOURCES:

Dear Science: What if Kids Need Their Moms? link

Psychoanalyst’s Advice For Young Parents link

“Mother Culture” and Mothers as Transmitters of Culture link

Another Perspective on the Latest research on Early Child Care link

Don’t buy your kids a smartphone for Christmas

Published on November 15, 2024January 13, 2026 by EF TeamLeave a comment

Over and over and over again, we see that a child can easily access pornography on his or her smartphone and we see them getting addicted at increasingly young ages.

Dear parents, this Christmas, please do not buy your kids porn!

Now, what do I mean by that? I mean that, every Christmas, many, many parents buy their children a smartphone or an iPad for Christmas.

Your kids, if you have kids of that age, have probably been begging for one. Almost every kid wants a smartphone or wants an iPad, not because they want to call people or text people, but because they want access to the internet.

Let me just give you a couple of reasons why this is a terrible idea.

For the last 13 years I’ve speaking on the issue of pornography to young students right across Canada and the United States, and even at times in Europe. And what I have found is that, over and over and over again, we see that kids are accessing pornography on their smartphones and getting addicted at increasingly young ages.

In Christian schools the average age of first exposure to pornography is going down every year. I’ve spoken to about 3,000 students this year alone, and the average age of first exposure to pornography is Grade 6 (age 11–12). The average age of first exposure to pornography in Canada is age nine. It used to be far higher for Christian communities, but increasingly that’s going down.

I’ve spoken in schools where it’s common practice for parents to get kids their first smartphone when they’re heading into Grade 9 (age 14–15) or 10 (age 15–16). And, when I speak to the grade before they get their smartphone, I find that the problem with pornography is far less than the grade immediately afterwards. And the factor is always the same.

The pornography companies recognise this and they’ve actually re-digitised all of their content to make sure it’s easy to view on a phone and easy to look at.

And one of the things I want everybody to keep in mind is that these devices again are not simply just phones. They are access to everything; they are access to the entirety of the internet.

This would be the equivalent of, in 1985, if you had a house filled with unlocked closets and each of those closets were packed with pornography. That’s the equivalent today of having a home filled with unlocked devices that do not have filters, that are not locked down. And you’re just hoping that at no point is your child, in a moment of curiosity or temptation or even by accident, going to go onto a porn site or stumble across a porn site — or, increasingly, as kids send each other clips or send each other images — that they’re not going to fall into temptation or fall into sin in that way.

When you give your kid a smartphone, you are relinquishing control of what they see, and even though some smartphones can be locked entirely down, very, very few parents know as much about this technology as their kids do. And I have gotten more calls than I can count in the last two years alone from parents who found that their kids, with all this time on their hands, managed to get around all the blocks and all of the filters and access porn anyway.

I’ve also heard from many parents who even said that their kid got addicted to porn as young as 11, 12 or 13 years old because they found an old smartphone in a junk drawer or somewhere in the house that nobody was using; and that they could take it, connect to the internet and then look at pornography that way.

Kids will say they need a phone because they want to be able to keep in touch with their parents, or because they want to be able to call their friends. I don’t have any opinion on kids getting a phone that’s used to text or to call.

My issue is with giving kids access to the internet, because over the last 13 years I’ve seen the massive amount of damage that this has done to kids in our Christian communities. I’ve talked to kids who are 15 years old and got addicted to pornography at age 5. I’ve spoken to Grade 11 classes (age 16–17) where every single girl in that grade struggled with porn at some point in the previous six months.

I remember vividly one kid putting up his hand in the middle of a presentation and he said: “If these smartphones are so dangerous, why do parents keep on giving them to us?”

I think that’s a great question, and I think it’s a question we should all consider when we’re deciding this Advent Season what to get our kids for Christmas.

One of my friends put it really well. One parent asked him: “When do you give your child a smartphone?” His answer, I think, was perfect. He said: “Whenever you want their childhood to end.”

By Jonathon van Maren. This article first appeared at The Bridgehead.

‘Babette’s Feast’: World Congress of Families, Melbourne, 2014

Published on August 14, 2014May 7, 2026 by EF TeamLeave a comment

Endeavour Forum has organised quarterly public meetings for decades, often with federal or state MPs as guest speakers. We have on a few occasions faced small protests, once when Tony Abbott was Minister for Health and spoke at one of our birthday celebrations and, on another occasion, when a state MP who is pro-life was our guest speaker. However, the combination of Endeavour Forum and the World Congress of Families hosting an Event at which federal and state Ministers gave the opening and welcome speeches and Dr. Angela Lanfranchi spoke about the link between induced abortion and breast cancer, touched a raw nerve with the pro-abortionists, as did our stance on marriage with homosexual activists, not to mention those who were unhappy with the Federal budget, plus the usual rent-a-dole-crowd who have nothing better to do than protest and “occupy” without really having any constructive solutions to societal problems. I will refer collectively to these groups as the “ferals” from now on.

We usually have our meetings in church halls, and I began naively trying two parishes, but with the ferals threatening there would be l,000 protestors blocking entrances, infiltrating the halls and generally making the Event unmanageable, both parishes bailed out, although the police in both areas undertook to provide adequate protection.

Incidentally the police have been splendid throughout this saga – they alerted squads in every region where I booked a venue and were courteous and helpful throughout. It has been a pleasure to deal with them and also with the “intelligence” division which kept me informed of estimated feral numbers, and assured me that there would be far less than l,000.

Next I tried a reception centre, but, once the ferals got wind of this, they threatened the reception centre that, not only would they wreck the WCF Event, but they would ruin their business by targeting future wedding receptions at their venue. To me this sounds like quasi-criminal behaviour, and it is an issue which the State government should examine, because it is a genuine threat to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. I also tried the Malvern Town Hall, (I am a ratepayer in this area) and here my local MP, State Treasurer, the Hon. Michael O’Brien, was very helpful. He got the police to assure the Town Hall would provide adequate protection against protestors. However the Town Hall is heritage-listed, and the Council decided it was too risky, even though it is situated right next to the Malvern police station.

So then I tried to be really clever and booked the Event at a hotel under the name of “Babette’s Feast”: it was to be a birthday celebration, which it was, for our patron, Dr. Joe Santamaria OAM (91) and Arthur Hartwig, one of our email news editors (87). Of course I told the hotel management of the real format and who the illustrious speakers were. We worked out and I paid for the internal security, and the hotel faithfully kept my secret. So guess what happened – the staff of the federal and state Ministers involved did a “risk assessment”, the police descended in force on the hotel and assured them they would have adequate police to deal with l,000 protestors, and the hotel panicked because they realised the premises would be locked down, and their other guests would not be able to get in or out easily. What these ministerial staffers do not realise is that, when the government books a hotel for a controversial conference, like the G20, it books the entire hotel, and the hotel is locked down to other than official delegates. Of course Endeavour Forum cannot afford to book an entire hotel, so there I was 48 hours before the 30th August with no venue and 400 registrants.

I was offered a Christian community centre in an outer suburb, but it had 24 acres of unfenced grounds and would have required a regiment of the Australian Defence Force to protect it. Then Danny Nalliah of Catch the Fire Ministries offered me his auditorium, promised faithfully that he would not back out, said he was friends with the local police and, best of all, mentioned that his venue had a steel mesh fence around it and could be relatively easily protected. So at last I had a venue, but then the saga began with the speakers backing out – the Liberal MPs said they could not speak at a venue that was registered as the office of another political party (Danny’s auditorium is registered as the office of Rise Up Australia). I was unaware of this Liberal Party policy – it seems an absurd policy because it would be a great opportunity to win adherents to your own Party, or even some of its policies if you can do so on the premises of another Party. I didn’t have time to argue with the Liberals, as I was too busy replacing them with high quality alternative speakers. The Hon. Kevin Andrews and the Hon. Robert Clark were only going to stay for a few minutes anyway to open the Event and welcome delegates to Victoria, and Dr. Larry Jacobs, Managing Director of the World Congress of Families and Dr. Joe Santamaria performed those formalities adequately.

The apology offered by Bernie Finn, MP, convenor of the March for the Babies was interesting – he withdrew before I had settled on Danny Nalliah’s venue, because his wife and daughters were concerned for his safety. No doubt they were after the rough treatment so many of us experienced at last year’s March for the Babies, but I believe it is the duty of State MPs to work to ensure the safety of themselves and everyone else at controversial meetings, not stay away.

This Event was turning into a huge issue of freedom of speech and assembly, and was not just about pro-life and pro-marriage politics. It was also a huge irony that the previous venues I had tried to book had rejected the Event because of security issues relating to the speakers, and now the speakers were rejecting the Event because of the venue! Well I guess one can’t win them all, but it made me even more determined to keep faith with the 400 supporters who had registered, and to organise an Event they would never forget.

Next of the speakers to pull out were Bishop Elliott and Fr. Glen Tattersall, who was chairing the talk by Cardinal Burke. Their excuse was that some years ago Danny Nalliah had said – or was reported to have said – that maybe the bush fires were God’s judgment on Victoria because of our awful abortion legislation. Fr. Tattersall added for good measure that he would be advising the Cardinal not to speak at what was a “Protestant conventicle”. I have no idea what a “Protestant conventicle” means, but I don’t think it means a Protestant mini-convent! When I reminded Fr. Tattersall of the Flood and Sodom and Gomorrah and said that, while I don’t share Danny’s theology, many pastors do speak in that style, he became angry and ordered me out of his office lest I speak to the Cardinal and offer him a different perspective on the venue. Overlooked in all this is that Danny was not the Convenor or organiser of the Event, he was merely renting his auditorium to Endeavour Forum for the cost of the security guards. How could we be blamed for what our landlord said a few years ago? Whatever happened to “interfaith dialogue” and “ecumenism”? And what about “anti-discrimination policies” so popular with the intelligentsia?

All this made me even more determined that the Event would not be shut down, even if I had only one speaker, and I and Danny’s dog, Esha, were the only audience. Yes, Danny Nalliah is a natural human being with a loving family and a dog, and in his backyard Danny is building an Ark for his family and his dog, just in case of another Flood….. (THIS IS A JOKE, I have to state this for all those pompous elite who have no sense of humour….). But I was NOT the only member of the audience, and I had excellent substitute speakers who came at less than 12 hours notice to give superb talks.

* With less than 48 hours to go, my loyal committee got on their phones and mobiles and called nearly everyone of the 400 who had registered, and most of them came to the new venue even though Hallam is a far out suburb distant from the other venues we had advertised. (Yes we had done several re-printings of the program, plus a mail out covering the various changes, but we had no time to do all that again).

* The local police provided excellent protection so that all registrants got in safely and all but one feral of the 50 protestors were kept out. My “intelligence” source was correct in estimating that there would be far fewer than the l,000 protestors the ferals had boasted about. One feral stripped down to her waist and painted her nipples bright blue. This was the most intellectual argument of the day on the feral side of the fence, but I failed to get the point.

* Teresa Martin, President of Cherish Life, Queensland, flew down from Queensland, and very competently chaired the Event when I explained I could not chair it as well as deal with the media and the police.

* Dr. David van Gend, a busy GP and Queensland Secretary of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life, drove all the way from Toowoomba to Brisbane airport late on Friday night to catch the last flight to Melbourne so he could chair Dr. Lanfranchi’s segment and give the talk on euthanasia. On the abortion-breast cancer issue he emphasised that this should not be a pro-life versus pro-abortion issue but a scientific issue, free of abortion politics. On euthanasia he gave both moral and medical perspectives.

* Rev. Mark Durie, vicar of St. Mary’s Anglican church in Caulfield, author and theologian, a Shillman-Ginsburg Writing Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and Adjunct Research Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Other Faiths at Melbourne School of Theology, referred to Bettina Arndt’s article in The Australian in which she had documented how children living with their biological married parents do better on education. health and societal outcomes, and he queried why quoting such studies enraged so many. He also referred to the threats to freedom of speech highlighted by our difficulty in getting a venue.

* Danny Nalliah sat inside the fence with a megaphone and assured the ferals that “Jesus loves you and I love all of you too”. This what our Catholic prelates should have done and I am guessing Cardinal Burke might have done so had Fr. Tattersall allowed me to speak to him, because in Rome Cardinal Burke courageously took part in the Manif pour tous-Italia demonstration on behalf of the natural family. Our Catholic prelates should note that Danny’s “Options plus Care” pregnancy support service is the only one that offers ultra-sound screening. Seeing their in-utero babies is a great deterrent to abortion.

* Our caterers did a splendid job after much turmoil. Tanya O’Brien and her Helpers, who were delegated to provide morning and afternoon teas, never knew from one day to the next whether they would be on duty or not, as some venues would allow outside catering, some would not. Ditto for our lunch provider, Steve Khan of the Australian Association of Pakistani Christians. He inspected kitchens at some venues, then was cancelled at others, but he provided an excellent lunch at short notice at Hallam. Steve also announced an initiative of “Forgiveness Day” when we each forgive someone else. (I have a long list of people I need to forgive).

* Several Catholic priests, nuns and seminarians as well as other Christian pastors attended, and were effusive in their praise for the Event. One lady told me she hadn’t had such an exciting day in a long time, she loved being escorted by the police through the yelling mob of ferals. Incidentally the police also kept a low profile watch on the other venues which I had booked, just in case not-up-to-date ferals turned up there. A great deal of Melbourne was well protected on Saturday, 30th August 2014.

* Rev. Fred Nile, Christian Democratic Party, the only MP to keep faith with us, heard Dr. Lanfranchi speak on aborton and breast cancer, and has raised the matter in the NSW Parliament requesting research on the issue.

* The Event was very multi-ethnic. Danny’s security guards seemed to be Polynesian, and Bernie Gaynor and Brendan Keogh’s squads were dinkum Aussies. Michael Treacy from the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification did a superb job with the audio-visuals, despite all the changes of speakers.

* There was great networking among the Catholic and Protestant groups at the Event, many of whom had never met before. What I found most cheering was how much everyone seemed to enjoy the day. “Babette’s Feast” worked out splendidly, and there were smiles all around and laughter when I quoted the email I received from an atheist who said he was sure I would go to hell.

I was determined to stand up for the right to free speech, even though I might have had to pitch a marquee on my back lawn. It may not have been big enough for 400 people, but it is big enough for me to build a mini Ark. You know, just in case Danny Nalliah or the global warming devotees are right after all…..